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Forest ecology

Definition

Forest ecology is the study of all aspects of the ecology of wooded areas, including rainforest, deciduous and evergreen, temperate and boreal forest. It includes the community ecology of the trees and other plant and non-plant species, as well as ecosystem processes and conservation.

Reliable estimates of the total forest carbon (C) pool are lacking due to insufficient information on dead organic matter (DOM). Here, the authors estimate that the current DOM C stock in China is 925 ± 54 Tg and that it grew by 6.7 ± 2.2 Tg C/yr over the past two decades primarily due to increasing forest area

News and Comment

Understanding the impacts of government interventions intended to support rural development — such as strengthening land rights or boosting commercial agriculture — is crucial for designing better policies. Two recent studies highlight some of the complexities in measuring outcomes for people and forests.

Global Forest Watch provides up-to-date and interactive information on forest cover for governments, the private sector, NGOs, journalists, universities and the general public. We talked to Director Crystal Davis about how it works, its achievements and its future plans.

A steep decline in archiving could make large tree-ring datasets irrelevant. But increased spatiotemporal coverage, the addition of novel parameters at sub-annual resolution, and integration with other in situ and remote Earth observations will elevate tree-ring data as an essential component of global-change research.